Differing with President Barack Obama’s assessment, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton has cast ISIS as the leading threat of international terror that has got to be defeated and not just contained.
“It cannot be contained, it must be defeated,” Clinton said, participating in the second Democratic presidential debate on Saturday night – just a day after the ISIS’ Paris carnage and two days after Obama claimed that the militant formation has been “contained”.
Clinton, however, took the stand that it cannot be an American fight, and went on to say that the bulk of the responsibility to deal with ISIS rests with the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, the Iraqis and the region.
US troops in Iraq are training the Iraqi military, while Special Operations forces are working with Kurds and Arabs in a supportive role, she said but stressed: “This cannot be an American fight, although American leadership is essential.”
Clinton’s stand prompted her two rivals for the Democratic nomination – Senator Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley – to assert that America does bear a major responsibility in battling ISIS.
As Sanders put it, it was after all America’s “disastrous invasion of Iraq” that “unravelled the region completely” and led to the rise of ISIS, reminding Clinton that she voted for the invasion that turned out to be “one of the worst foreign policy blunders in the modern history of United States”, while he himself voted against it. Sanders conceded that the United States cannot wage the battle against ISIS alone, so it must lead an international coalition, including countries of the region.
O’Malley, too, sought to tell Clinton that “this actually is America’s fight”, albeit it cannot solely be America’s fight. “America is best when we are actually standing up to evil in this world,” he said, mooting that the US work in collaboration with allies in the battle against ISIS, bringing into play a new thinking and a fresh approach.
Clinton, like President Obama, steered clear of using the term “radical Islam”, commenting: “We are not at war with Islam or Muslims. We are at war with violent extremism. We are at war with people who use their religion for purposes of power and oppression.”